Leader Review

What is All about?
Sekhar Kammula’s adventorous new venture based on the political scene of the state.

The Plot:
The film starts rolling with a large minister’s convoy somewhere in the state and one of the cars getting blown away by a pre-set bomb. And the news starts rolling, telling us that the targeted car was that of the State’s Chief Minister (played by Suman). A few cuts intorduces the shaken political arena, the various party heads of the state and the talks for the next CM already in progress.

That’s when Arjun Prasad (the debutant Rana), the son of the bombed CM coming back from the US enters the film with no addittional graphics on the screen (a subtle entrance, better). Peddayana (Kota Srinivas Rao) is the political big head of the state and a relative to the Arjun Prasad family. Peddayana is who had been making the schmes to see to that their family always occupies the CM place in Andhra Pradesh, for the past 30 years. The other main character is that of Dhunanjaya a.k.a Dhanu (played by Subbaraju). The main ends in the film are Dhanu and Arjun. Dhanu makes his own plans to be the CM as soon as the ‘CM dead’ flashes up on the news screen. The rest of the film (almost all of it) is what Arjun does to save his State and his Dad’s ideologies and how Dhanu tries to destroy him. There are not one but two main girl romances. One with a journalist turned friend (Priya Anand playing Ratna Prabha) and the other is a political plan getting personal (Richa G playing Archana).

The Actors:
Subbaraju playing the hot tempered, over ambitous politician steals the frame whenver he was in there. What made Subbaraju stand out so much – it was either Subbaraju’s great performance or the super amateur performances of the others.Kota Srinivas Rao appearing now and then does what he usually does, impress.The much awaited debut of Rana hardly makes an attempt to impress the viewer. He did have a few moments here and there, but as a whole, it was unimpressive.

What’s good:
The actor and the star both tried to make a good film (just tried). The director not known for this type of a film and Rana making a bold and rather matured debut were at least…pleasing.For once it was a relief to see that the new star kid is not dancing on the sets or beating goons to get your attention. He was trying to act, a good sign.

What went wrong:
The answer to that would be ‘almost everything’. The screenplay to start with. The film seemed like more than 3 and half hours when its only a 160 minute run in reality. The cinematography was super-unskilled, it couldn’t create the much needed seriousness the film needed. And what went wrong in essence is the director being stuck up between two genres of filmmaking and ruining both.

Bottom line:
The first installment and a few minutes towards the end were watchable. You need not rush to the film at the earliest. Catch it when you can, because watching a failure with good intensions is better than watching a cliched money minded film.